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OUR HOME SCHOOL

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My College Students Taught Me How to Homeschool
A note to our Protestant HS sisters
Catholic Families Write "A Typical Homeschool Day"
Articles on the Net Related to Our Philsophy
Favorite Catholic Homeschooling Catalogs
Favorite Secular Homeschooling Catalogs
Money Saving Homeschool Ideas
Reviews of Homeschool Material
Online Support
Narration etc.



After having spent 10 years and countless hours preparing lectures designed to “get” my college students to think, I realized I had to homeschool my own children. I was teaching at a large university that was considered a public ivy league, but these students could not think for themselves and their knowledge base was very weak. They were unexcited about the world and most of them cared only about getting good grades. What was most frightening was that they had not only conformed to societies standards but when challenged about their views and values they could not present a logical arguement to defend themselves....and they didn’t care!

Like most new homeschoolers I read dozens of books and bought much useless curriculum. Over the years I have come to realize that what I wish most to instill in my children is a love of God and an appreciation for His creation as being a gift from Him to us. Children can best appreciate this gift if they understand it--that is, if they can see the relationship between God, themselves and the universe. I have settled on a few approaches that work well for our family and are helping us to reach this goal.

With our younger children we lean heavily on Charlotte Mason's approach, keeping in mind that “Education is to light a fire, not to fill a bucket.” Too many of my students had full buckets but no fire. You can read about some of her ideas at the links that follow this note.

We also try to give our children a Classical education. You’ll find several articles online that pertain to this subject (see “Articles...” below). This approach is to broad to cover here, but many aspects of it are in agreement with Miss. Mason’s approach. We follow this to a degree by providing our children with material to be memorized while they are still young (see individual subjects on index page for suggestions) and by providing them with a general framework on which to hang these facts later. The main focus in our homeschool is world history. By studying this thorougly the children can see God’s salvific actions throughout the history of man. Our children read complete books and are introduced to the classics when they begin to show an interest in those books. We also include Latin, logic, and several other areas of study that are suggested by the classical approach.

One of the staples on our shelves and that we constantly use in our homeschool are old books. Books copyrighted before 1920 are not only quaint but they often contain factual information in an interesting manner. The main characters usually have good moral reasoning skills and the sentence structure is far more sophisticated than that found in books printed later in the century. It is generally accepted that children who write well also read a great deal. If they are exposed to books that are well written, they will write in a similar style.

Another aspect of our homeschool are thematic studies. This is usually done after school time with an occasional school day spent just exploring that theme. At the time of this writing we are studying birds. This is easily done by hanging a bird feeder in front of a central window, providing bonoculars and a bird identification chart as well as listening to tapes for bird identification.





Homeschool Approach Articles on the Net

If you are interested in some of these approaches, read more at these links

The Eclectic Homeschool

Charlotte Mason Links

Classical Education Links for Homeschoolers

Resources on Homeschooling and Classical Education

Excellent Information About Unit Studies

Making Units Studies Work for You (the author’s units are excellent)






Catholic Homeschool Catalogs: Our Favorites

Catholic Heritage Curriculum

Aquinas Homeschool Books big discounts

Catholic Shopper

Bright Spark (sells many things-owned by Catholic HS mom)






Secular Homeschooling Catalogs: Our Favorites

Bright Spark (sells many discounted books-owned by Catholic HS mom)

Rainbow Resource Discounted Material: email RAINBOWRES@aol.com

Shekinah Curriculum Cellar

The Elijah Catalog

Timberdoodle

Tobin's Lab

Carolina Biological Supply




Money Saving Homeschool Ideas

Over the years I’ve maintained a file on money saving ideas for the homeschooling mom. Only a few of these ideas are original. Many were posted on message boards or on e-mail lists in response to questions. If you scroll down you will see links to web sites devoted to saving money and to message boards that are visited frequently by other homeschool moms.


White Boards (used with dry erase markers) can be created by using the panneling that building supply stores sell for the inside of showers. It looks the same and works the same but costs 90% less. Crayola also sells a chalkboard paint that can be spread directly on any wall. Works fine.

How to reuse workbooks. Remove pages from workbook, insert into top load sheet protectors and place into 3 ring binder. Students should write on the plastic sheet protectors with Visa Via markers (erasable markers don't erase well on this type of plastic). When the page has been corrected, remove the page from the binder and rinse under a stream of water while holding top. Pat dry and return to binder. This is very simple and allows workbooks to be used over and over again.
Train children early to use loose leaf paper rather than spiral bound paper, and the back of scrap paper for non-essential schoolwork. With a large family this will be a savings over the year.

Purchase material only from catalogs that have a good return policy. Get into the habit of examining the books carefully when they arrive and send anything back that won't work for you immediately. If you leave it on the shelf to examine later you will probably miss the return deadline.

Most libraries today have an good video section that can be used to reinforce ideas that are being studied. View history videos before the children as some of them contain anti-Catholic biases.

Many PBS stations have "back logged" shows. These are educational shows that are played at night, back to back, for educators to tape. This is easier than remembering to tape a particular series on a certain weekday and a certain time. When you call the station ask for an ITV (instructional TV) listing.

If you are looking for a particular book or even a set of encyclopedias spread the word. My mother put an ad in the free comunity paper (Pennysaver)asking if anyone had an old set of encyclopedias that they would like to donate. She received 12 calls and went to pick up 4 sets (we shared the wealth). The set I have is 20 years old, but only the science is outdated.

For extra paper call the local newspaper and ask if they have any extra "end rolls". This is the surplus paper roll when they are done printing which is too short to use for a new printing. Newspapers are glad to give them away. If they ask remember....you are a school.

Many local copy shops have a day or a set of hours when they cut the cost of copying in half. Write this date or time on the calendar and save copying for those days.

Use the inter-library loan system. This system will allow you to save a lot of money. Your library will be able to get just about any book for you and will usually do this for free or for under $1. I request books that look great in the catalogs, but that I don't think I need to keep forever. I also request books that are expensive and that I want to check out before buying.

It is often cheaper to use old out of print books for teaching than new books. Some of the textbooks from the turn of the century are more exciting then the new books, more accurate, factual and less politically correct. Some of these can be picked up from online bookdealers for about half the cost of a new textbook. Especially good are the old English and History books (of course you'll need to fill in the last 100 years)

If you have access to low cost copying you can easily xerox old, out of print books which you will find at your library or through inter-library loan. Any book that is older than 75 years is in the public domain. I've also been told by two different librarians that any out of print book can be copied if it is for educational purposes.

Homeschool Budget (Catholic)

Freebies for Homeschoolers (Catholic page)




Online Support & Active Message Boards:

Wonderful Catholic Homeschool Listserve
e-mail cheel@ktc.com type subscribe in subject and body box

Classical Catholic Homeschool Listserve

Catholic Homeschool Forum

Kaleidoscapes Main Boards

Kaleidoscapes Science Board

KaleidoscapesCollege Board

Kaleidoscapes Unit Study Board





Reviews of Homeschool Material


Please Note: These reviews are not necessarily written by Catholics and related web pages may not conform to Church doctrine

Reviews by Catholic Moms
Curriculum Reviews
Another Review Site
Latin Curriculum Reviews





Narration etc.

NARRATION Fixes Information in a Child's Mind "Miss Mason found that if you use narration consistently, review is unnecessary. Narration is not merely an effort of memory, yet it increases the mind's ability to remember. A child gathers from the whole passage what he has assimilated and he will be able to remember his own assimilation (train of thought) months later, with no review from the teacher." Read more from Karen Andreola's Narration Article and another good article on narration.




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